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Sunday, 23 January 2011

These are the outcomes of our 1st try at casting a baby's feet and hand. As you peel away the rubbery alginate mixture its amazing just how much detail you start to see on the plater cast inside. With the pink from the mix slightly dying the plaster it looks spookily real. We were quite relieved to see the pink fade though as the plaster dried out!

A foot starting to emerge from the the mold. Its looking all wrinkly like the foots been in a bath for too long!

We were impressed with our creations and surprised ourselves at how amazingly real they looked. You can also see which ones have been exposed to air for longer as the pink becomes less bright.

We needn't have worried about the fist after all. It came out the best of all the casts.

An adorable little foot...ahhhhh.

So glas we didn't buy one of those kits from the shops and tried something a little differernt instead. The risk definitely paid off :o)

Wednesday, 19 January 2011

This evening I dropped into Twitter to discover lots of people I follow retweeting posts from a designer with the user name @SheDraws Today a friend of hers discovered that Claire's Accessories have plagerised a necklace design and have been selling it in their shops. If you follow the link below you will be able to read @SheDraws blog post about this and see examples of the 2 necklaces. They are scarily similar and clearly show no morals on the part of Claire's or even any attempt to make slight design changes.

Things like this make me so angry and are just so wrong. Designers need the credit they deserve for their hard work and not to be treated like this. If you feel strongly about this issue to please pass it on and avoid shopping in Claire's. Go to a real crafter for a quality piece of jewellery instead.

Tuesday, 18 January 2011

Its become popular recently for new parents to buy kits to imprint their baby's hand or foot print﻿. My sister had a baby in October and wanted to create a mini hand and foot to remember just how small Adam was when he was first born but being related to arty old me we decided to try for something a little different.

Armed with dental alginate and you tube tutorials we decided to cast both feet and a fist too.

Attempt no1 to imprint the feet was a disaster so thats when we looked up you tube!

I poured the quick setting alginate into a bag and and we then put Adam's foot into it and tried to keep him still until it set. It was soooo much easier when he fell asleep and then didn't move at all!!!

Looking into the cast.

As the alginate dried it turned pink. We poured plaster into the molds and then left them overnight to set. At this point my sister took the molds home and I was left wondering what these mini feet would look like. We both thought the fist mold hadn't worked as well as the feet had so I waited in anticipation to hear how well our efforts had worked........

Monday, 17 January 2011

Its been a while since I regularly blogged (life kind of caught up with me and time for blogging disappeared I'm afraid) and I've just realised that one of my last posts was about the glass casting workshop. So I told you all about the workshop and never ended up showing you how my pieces came out.

The cast glass still inside its mold.

Breaking open the molds

My finished pieces made from lead crystal. I had no idea that this level of detail would be seen within the glass so was really pleased with my mini sculptures.

Sunday, 16 January 2011

Yesterday I went on a leaded stained glass workshop which is a glass technique I've wanted to try for a while now. Having copperfoiled for 2years now I am more than ready to work with something new in the evening class ......and I've got a large project in mind for my house too.

The workshop started with choosing a design so I opted for this one which I decided to make Christmasy ready to come out each year and to replace some of the more spring/summer copper foiled designs I've already got hanging in my windows.

The morning session was fairly straight forward as I'm used to cutting glass but I was ready and waiting for the challenge of the afternoon when the lead came out of the cupboard! We all learnt to stretch the lead and how to cut it with 3 different tools and then it was time to put our learning into practice. Having watched my Tue eve classmates struggle with leading I thought this was going to be very very difficult, I was therefore surprised at how quickly a design could be leaded together. Ok quickly is a slight exaggeration but I was expecting it to be much longer and much more technical....although I know the designs we had chosen from were on the simpler side of challenging. I'm sure it won't be long before I'm back in the Tues class trying to lead a design and finding out what my classmates have been experiencing and will be quickly eating my own words!!!